Cathy Bennett Questions NTMA Pay, Bonuses and Air Corps Claims

Firstly, I'd like to welcome everybody here today. So, just following on, I suppose, from Joe's question in there in relation to wages and staffing, it actually seems to be a fantastic place to work that there's so many staff on such high salaries. Would I be correct in saying that the salaries that you're paid are much higher than civil servants in most other parts of government? I think if you're looking at the data, you would say broadly yes. The NTMA set up 35 years ago was designed to be a market-based private sector model to get people in to manage the assets and liabilities of the state. So, yes, you would say that. Yeah. And do you think that's fair? Well, I do because, and the reason I do and other people set up the agency on that basis is when you look at the scale of what's managed in the NTMA. So, in terms of going to the market, funding that over 200 billion, doing it in a prudent way, managing the assets of the state, you need the talent in the room. When you're talking to asset managers, fund managers, you need to have people on both sides of the table who know what they're doing. You have people doing payments, and we failed in this one payment. You have people doing derivative transactions, need to know which side of the button to press on the FX, which currency they're trading in, all those different aspects. And I think you need to have people of the appropriate skill and experience to do those jobs. And the second thing is, to get those people, we're competing against the banks, the law firms, the engineer firms, et cetera. So, yes, I do. Sounds very good, a very good salary to me. But in relation to that also, there was 270 personnel within the company also received 2.5 million last year in state-related bonuses as well. So, it's all coming from government funding, am I correct in saying that? Absolutely. So, in terms of performance-related pay, again, it's another aspect of the pay model. It's another tool. It's non-pensionable performance-related pay. It's common in the marketplace. We're probably a little different, and we publish the amounts generally. They average about 9,000 or 10,000 euro to about a third of the staff. The one thing is, we tend to disperse to more staff, because all parts, the front and the middle office are all important, rather than pay large amounts to some people that might appear big, as the industry does, because it might incentivize the wrong risk-taking behavior. So, we tend to try and disperse to, as I said, about between 30% and 40% of staff. So, I'm just interested as well, then, in relation to the States Claims Agency and the duty of care to those that have been wounded by government policies such as thalidomide sufferers, Hep C, and now the Air Corps. Is your policy in relation to, I suppose, the pay-related bonuses, would your staff get pay-related bonuses to help ensure that you fight these cases every single step of the way? You try to break down the plaintiffs and then get them to withdraw their claims. Would you feel that your staff get pay-related bonuses for doing that? So, maybe, Deputy, before I ask Ciarán to comment on the cases and the management of claims, just in terms of performance-related pay, to be very clear. Performance-related pay is set on an agency-wide basis, not set for one business unit over another, and never would the approach be to pay performance-related pay for a specific item to incentivize somebody to do a particular... What do they get the pay-related bonus for? Pay-related bonuses depends on the performance of the individual in their overall duties, the performance of their business area in the wider NTMA... So, you're telling me that it has nothing to do with claims? No, people in the State Claims Agency are one cohort who also get... So, they're getting pay-related bonuses for ensuring claims don't go through? No, not that. For the performance of their duty overall to fulfill their mandate, but not incentivized to do one specific thing over another. They must always do the job to the best of their ability. Okay. And the State Claims Agency, I'd just like to point this one out, they fail to spot chemical exposure in the Air Corps personnel, even though they did health and safety audits from 2006 till 2026. Would I be correct in saying that? They failed to see that, and that there was no adequate PPE. Would I be correct in saying that? Maybe I could answer that, because I'm the director of the State Claims Agency. Yes, our risk management team, which is a team of scientists and engineers and environmental and fire safety qualified people, did carry out audits in Baldonnell in 2006 and 2007. But they failed to see that staff weren't wearing PPE? Just bear with me just for a minute. I just want to explain. So, the particular area that is the impugned area was called the Old Engine Repair Flight Workshop. By the time we carried out our audits in Baldonnell, that had been demolished or was disused. I think it was disused in 2006 and demolished in 2007. So, it was never, in fact, inspected by our risk management people. So, they couldn't have been aware of any issues with that particular workshop at the time. So, there was no certificates of compliance from 2006? Maybe if I could just explain to you what we do. So, our risk management is to advise and assist state authorities. And one of the things that we're most conscious about doing is to ensure that, say, somewhere like the Air Corps or the Navy or the Army, just looking at them as a group, that they have in place safety performance management. And that's what we do. But when you investigated this, was there safety performance management in place or not? Yes. And so, when we went in in 2006 and 2007, we absolutely made sure that such performance management systems were in place. And they were. And we did carry out spot audits, by the way, of various parts of Baldonnell. And very often, we commented negatively on things that we found. And did you spot at that time that there was a failure to store carcinogenic and highly corrosive chemicals on the property? Did you see that? As I say to you, Deputy, that flight workshop was gone when we did it. But generally, in terms of chemical management, we have found that the Air Corps are adhering to proper practice. Okay. And still, you have how many cases? 24 cases are still... We have... Oh, yeah. We had 11 originally and 13 very recently. And then you have... I've also been told that there are 65 Air Corps personnel have died in relation to the health implications that happened there. But are them cases? Where are those cases? Well, we only deal with cases, Deputy, where cases are actually made to us, where we have claims in front of us. And as I say, that's confined to the 24 that we have. Okay. I just want to go back then in relation to cases that you have. Have you received any cases yet in relation to the state's inability to diagnose and care for females with endometriosis? Have you received any cases in relation to that yet? Yes, we do have endometriosis claims. I don't actually have that broken down here out of this, but we would certainly be able to forward that information to you. Because it is a huge issue that is not being addressed by the state at the moment. So, there will be a lot more claims coming down the line in relation to endometriosis. I also want to go back in relation to cervical checks. Is there still cases on file in relation to cervical checks? Yes, cervical check is still ongoing. As you probably know, Deputy, our involvement in that is very much on the periphery that it's the laboratories largely that are involved in the litigation. But just to give you some figures on it, there are 411 claims were created by us, 245 have been finalized, and there are 166 cases outstanding. Okay. And in relation to the endometriosis, you don't have case numbers there yet in relation to it? I do. In fact, I do have it, and I had it for a different forum than here today, Deputy. But imagine having the plethora of information that I have. I know. But I can send that to you. You can send. That would be fantastic. Thank you very much. Then just going back to in relation to 51% of your workforce is made up by women, of women. So why is there a men gender pay gap there of 15.1%? Thank you, Deputy. So you're right, it's about 51, 52 gender split. So we produced a gender pay gap report. First of all, that's not an equal pay issue, that's a representation issue. So I think it was over 20.5%. We have the data there four years ago, and we've had four years of improvement. So are men being paid more in the company? Yeah. And what that is a representation gap. If I go back to when I started in financial markets in the 1990s, it was heavily male orientated. So right now as EMT, executive management team, EMT minus one, we have 43% representation. But what it is, and it's getting better, it's because it's a representation gap where there are more senior men in those positions. So we have a number of different things to try and improve it. And it has improved over the last four years, if you look back over our various reports. And it's a very top item at the agency board and at the Remco committee. Okay. So it's a man's world. Well, look, hopefully it's, I think it's changing, but more to be done. Okay. And then just, I want to go into just in relation to contributions that you pay in relation to your superannuation that increased for by 14.2% to 16.3% of the salary and respective members of the scheme. Why are the contributions transferred externally to a managed fund? I'll take that. So under the NTMA Act, it provided for a pension fund to be established. So that was back in the nineties. So there is a separate fund for our staff in terms of the, in terms of pensions. It is out, the service provider is Mercer and the, there is an actuarial review done every three years in accordance with pension schemes. You'd get a, what it calls a tri-annual valuation every three years. It went up, but I'm pleased to say it's come down now from the 1st of January, 26, it's now back down to 14.3%. So it's, it's based on the advice of the actuary to ensure what the actuary is trying to do is ensure that the benefits that are promised to the employees are paid. I just want to know, is that standard practice with all state bodies? Well, it's standard practice for state bodies with a separate fund. You know, that's... There are very few with a separate fund. The central bank would be another example. I just keep saying it's a great place to work. It seems to be a fantastic place to work. You know, I'm sure everybody, every state body and every state employee would love to be working in the MTA between state bonuses, between having a fantastic pension ahead and also huge salaries. So I'd like to come back in again, John. Thank you for answering my question.